A Taste of Italy: Meet the Famous Pasta Grannies

The Italian Pasta Grannies are on a mission to pass on the food and culture staple of Italy down to the next generations. Pasta Grannies, the popular Youtube channel, is a video cookbook of sorts that features real Italian grandmothers making the handmade pastas that their own nonne used to prepare.

Pasta may have had its technical birth in China, but most will agree that the Shang dynasty doesn’t whip up a plate of pasta quite like an Italian nonna. Italy and pasta are forever linked, but over time, the art of handmade pasta became more of a culinary technique and less of a kitchen tradition. 

Pasta Grannies creator Vicky Bennison wants to change that. Food prep is nothing new for Bennison, whose work in international development took her on culinary adventures in Kenya, Siberia, Turkmenistan, and other delicious destinations. When she’s not preparing meals in exotic locales or splitting her time between London and central Italy, Bennison is penning and publishing food guides.  

And through her writing, she realized that age-old cooking skills, like how to make traditional Italian pasta recipes, weren’t getting passed down to the next generations. Pasta Grannies is her solution: a straightforward video series that films an Italian matriarch (or in some cases, patriarch) as she prepares classic Italian pasta dishes. 

The series has over 500 videos and nearly one-million subscribers. Let’s take a look at some of the grannies, regions, and Italian pasta recipes featured on this tasty Youtube channel.

Sample the best Italian pasta day after day when you join our Best of Italy 11-day tour. From bigoli alongside the Venetian canals to maccheroni positanesi on the Amalfi Coast, let us lead you by the fork on a journey to 11 Italian cities that will wow you before, during, and after each meal.

Piedmont

Also called “Piemonte” in Italian, the Piedmont region sits in the northwest corner of Italy. Though its black and white truffles are revered around the world, Piedmont’s pasta hardly plays second fiddle on the dinner table. Tagliolini pasta, or tarajin in Piedmontese, is a long, thin egg noodle. Taglia actually means “cut” in Italian and the tagliolini noodle cannot exceed two millimetres in width. 

Chicken liver pasta is a popular way to eat tagliolini noodles and Pasta Grannies showcases it in two fantastic videos. Maddelena, a 93-year-old Pasta Granny, prepares tajarin with rabbit livers. While 88-year-old Giovana teaches viewers how to make tagliolini without meat, she does discuss the importance of finding the right truffle for the dish.

Sardinia

Sardinia is a blue zone: an area of the world where diet plays an important role in the longevity of its residents. Pasta may not be the sole key to living beyond 100, but eating a Sardinian gnocchi certainly couldn’t hurt your chances. Gnocchetti sardi, or simply malloreddus, isn’t technically a gnocchi. This ridged pasta, similar to cavatelli, has a yellow-orange tint thanks to the addition of saffron.

Pasta Grannies has a healthy serving of Sardinian videos. Among the dozens of options, you’ll find Anna Manai making malloreddus, 86-year-old Maria showing you how to substitute a fork for a gnocchi board, and 92-year-old Giulia adding artichokes into the mix.

Le Marche

Against the Adriatic Sea and the Sibillini Mountains, the Marche region of Central Italy is a spectacular place to dine al fresco. Look down at your plate and you may find either a lumachelle pasta or a Maccheroncini di Campofilone. The former, called passatelli in nearby Emilia-Romagna, are small rings of pasta that almost appear snail-like. As for Maccheroncini di Campofilone, this dried egg pasta is made in the traditional ultra-fine ribbon shape. It dates back to medieval times in 1400 Campofilone. 

Pasta Grannies has episodes featuring both: the 90-year-old Olga discusses the slow drying technique, nonna Luigina adds a meaty ragu, and Gianna adds a bit of spice to her Calabria-style maccheroni. An episode featuring lumachelle is a short and sweet video showcasing the Dutchess’s Little Snails dish from Italy’s Pesaro Urbino region.

Sicily

Sicily is part of Italy, but locals will rightfully insist that Sicilian food is not Italian food. This island’s cuisine reflects the flavors and techniques that the Greeks, Romans, French, Spanish, and Arab brought to Sicily over thousands of years. The shape of pasta not only varies from the mainland, but also between Sicilian towns. Busiate, for example, is a twisted pasta from Trapani; ringed anelletti pasta is from Palermo.

Pasta alla Norma is one of the most popular Sicilian pasta dishes and is a natural inclusion on Pasta Grannies. Nonna Graziella discusses how “alla Norma” pasta can be of varying shapes. Other Sicilian videos include 90-year-old Caterina making a lasagna with tagliatelle noodles and 95-year-old Provvidenza baking a pasta ncasciata messinese. 

We invite you to compare the tastes and textures of different Sicilian pastas on our Sicily In Depth tour. This week-long excursion takes you across the island, stopping at 8 exceptional cities where you’ll have plenty of opportunity to dive into a sea of Sicilian cuisine.